Travis Cole wrote:
>If they are going to charge that much, then I don't really care for an ICQ
>version for Linux. But I still would like a program that allows me to tell if
>my freiends are online and then message or chat them.
To tell if someone is online:
- finger
- rwho (but rwhod isn't installed in most places)
- talk (try to talk...)
To message:
- rwrite / rmsg, if installed (it's not in most places)
- e-mail
- perhaps ytalk (I seem to remember that ytalkd had a feature for this,
but I'm not sure)
- IRC, if he's on there (tell him to be [1])
To chat:
- talk (ytalk for more than two people at a time)
- IRC
- one of the voice chat programs for voice
The major problem with these is that they're not installed everywhere. But
neither is ICQ. And if we're going to get a system that's in common use, I'd
much rather have it be something free, decentralised and tried-and-true
(like IRC or fingerd+talkd+smtpd) than something proprietary like ICQ.
It appears to me that the only "advantage" of ICQ is that it's being
actively marketed...
[1] In any case, he'll need to have something running to receive the
messages. Whether he runs some form of daemon (ytalkd, rmsgd, or some
custom thing), an ICQ client, an IRC client, or an e-mail notifier such
as biff (or, e.g., a procmail script that alerts him when he gets mail
from friends but not otherwise) doesn't really matter in terms of
functionality...
If he doesn't have fingerd running for privacy or security reasons, the
same reasons should not "allow" him to run ICQ either, because ICQ has
the same breach of privacy (but a good fingerd is more configurable) and
security (and ICQ is likely just as "secure" as MSIE).
If you're concerned about the security of IRC (i.e., crackers attack IRC
networks frequently), form a closed IRC server (or network) that only
your friends can access... The problem of crackers will most likely
be there in any popular "public" chat system. (Though the IRC protocol
is not very security-oriented; but you can do things like run your
closed IRC server so that it can only be accessed through ssh from an
authenticated machine.)
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